Ecological Processes and Resilience
Lead Research Organisation:
UK CENTRE FOR ECOLOGY & HYDROLOGY
Department Name: UNLISTED
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Richard Pywell (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Kogure Y
(2016)
European shags optimize their flight behavior according to wind conditions.
in The Journal of experimental biology
Kopf A
(2015)
The ocean sampling day consortium.
in GigaScience
Kovács-Hostyánszki A
(2017)
Ecological intensification to mitigate impacts of conventional intensive land use on pollinators and pollination.
in Ecology letters
Kröel-Dulay G
(2015)
Increased sensitivity to climate change in disturbed ecosystems.
in Nature communications
Kunstler G
(2016)
Plant functional traits have globally consistent effects on competition.
in Nature
Lachmann S
(2016)
Ecophysiology matters: linking inorganic carbon acquisition to ecological preference in four species of microalgae (Chlorophyceae)
in Journal of Phycology
Lahoz-Monfort JJ
(2017)
Bringing It All Together: Multi-species Integrated Population Modelling of a Breeding Community.
in Journal of agricultural, biological, and environmental statistics
Lang P
(2016)
Phytoplankton community responses in a shallow lake following lanthanum-bentonite application.
in Water research
Larsen P
(2015)
Satellite remote sensing data can be used to model marine microbial metabolite turnover
in The ISME Journal
Lasky JR
(2015)
Ontogenetic shifts in trait-mediated mechanisms of plant community assembly.
in Ecology
Latombe G
(2017)
A vision for global monitoring of biological invasions
in Biological Conservation
Lehmann K
(2015)
16S rRNA assessment of the influence of shading on early-successional biofilms in experimental streams.
in FEMS microbiology ecology
Lewis S
(2015)
Contrasting responses of male and female foraging effort to year-round wind conditions.
in The Journal of animal ecology
Longdon B
(2017)
Vertically transmitted rhabdoviruses are found across three insect families and have dynamic interactions with their hosts.
in Proceedings. Biological sciences
Lürling M
(2016)
Editorial - A critical perspective on geo-engineering for eutrophication management in lakes.
in Water research
Ma J
(2015)
Mutational bias of Turnip Yellow Mosaic Virus in the context of host anti-viral gene silencing.
in Virology
Maberly S
(2018)
Ecological Informatics
Maberly SC
(2017)
Ecological imperatives for aquatic CO2-concentrating mechanisms.
in Journal of experimental botany
Maberly SC
(2015)
Adaptation by macrophytes to inorganic carbon down a river with naturally variable concentrations of CO2.
in Journal of plant physiology
MacGregor CJ
(2015)
Pollination by nocturnal Lepidoptera, and the effects of light pollution: a review.
in Ecological entomology
Maes D
(2015)
The use of opportunistic data for IUCN Red List assessments IUCN Red Listing using opportunistic data
in Biological Journal of the Linnean Society
Marrs R
(2018)
Effects of removing sheep grazing on soil chemistry, plant nutrition and forage digestibility: Lessons for rewilding the British uplands
in Annals of Applied Biology
Martin P
(2015)
Impacts of tropical selective logging on carbon storage and tree species richness: A meta-analysis
in Forest Ecology and Management
Martin PA
(2017)
Impacts of invasive plants on carbon pools depend on both species' traits and local climate.
in Ecology
Mason S
(2015)
Geographical range margins of many taxonomic groups continue to shift polewards
in Biological Journal of the Linnean Society
Matyasovszky I
(2017)
Biogeographical drivers of ragweed pollen concentrations in Europe
in Theoretical and Applied Climatology
Maurice L
(2015)
The invertebrate ecology of the Chalk aquifer in England (UK)
in Hydrogeology Journal
Maziarz M
(2015)
Breeding success of the Great Tit Parus major in relation to attributes of natural nest cavities in a primeval forest
in Journal of Ornithology
McCracken M
(2015)
Social and ecological drivers of success in agri-environment schemes: the roles of farmers and environmental context
in Journal of Applied Ecology
McDermott Long O
(2017)
Sensitivity of UK butterflies to local climatic extremes: which life stages are most at risk?
in The Journal of animal ecology
Mehner T
(2016)
Effects of fish predation on density and size spectra of prey fish communities in lakes
in Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
Menichino N
(2016)
Contrasting response to mowing in two abandoned rich fen plant communities
in Ecological Engineering
Miller H
(2014)
Distribution, characteristics and condition of Arctic charr ( Salvelinus alpinus ) spawning grounds in a differentially eutrophicated twin-basin lake
in Ecology of Freshwater Fish
Milligan G
(2016)
Winners and losers in a long-term study of vegetation change at Moor House NNR: Effects of sheep-grazing and its removal on British upland vegetation
in Ecological Indicators
Mills JA
(2015)
Archiving Primary Data: Solutions for Long-Term Studies.
in Trends in ecology & evolution
Mills JA
(2016)
Solutions for Archiving Data in Long-Term Studies: A Reply to Whitlock et al.
in Trends in ecology & evolution
Milotic T
(2018)
Functionally richer communities improve ecosystem functioning: Dung removal and secondary seed dispersal by dung beetles in the Western Palaearctic
in Journal of Biogeography
Mitschunas N
(2015)
Diet of the Lesser Horseshoe Bat ( Rhinolophus hipposideros ) in Central Germany and Its Seasonal and Site-Specific Variation
in Acta Chiropterologica
Monteith D
(2016)
Trends and variability in weather and atmospheric deposition at UK Environmental Change Network sites (1993-2012)
in Ecological Indicators
Morandini V
(2017)
Natural expansion versus translocation in a previously human-persecuted bird of prey.
in Ecology and evolution
Morecroft M
(2016)
Interannual variability, stability and resilience in UK plant communities
in Ecological Indicators
Nelson BF
(2015)
Protracted treatment with corticosterone reduces breeding success in a long-lived bird.
in General and comparative endocrinology
Newbold LK
(2017)
Helminth burden and ecological factors associated with alterations in wild host gastrointestinal microbiota.
in The ISME journal
Newbold LK
(2015)
Rearing and foraging affects bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) gut microbiota.
in Environmental microbiology reports
Newell M
(2015)
Effects of an extreme weather event on seabird breeding success at a North Sea colony
in Marine Ecology Progress Series
| Description | See RCUK Narrative Impact |
| Exploitation Route | Expect findings to be taken forward in future. To be determined at 'end of grant' in 2019 |
| Sectors | Agriculture Food and Drink Energy Environment |
| Description | Science Area Annual Report: Ecological Processes & Resilience September 2014 1. Introduction 1.1 CEH's Challenges 2014-19 Our strategy, Meeting the Challenges of Environmental Change, covers the period 2014 to 2019 and sets out three interdependent, major societal and environmental challenges aligned with NERC strategy: securing the value of nature, building resilience to environmental hazards, and managing environmental change. 1.2 Meeting the Challenges In order to deliver our ambitions our research is managed via nine Science Areas. The 'Ecological Processes and Resilience' Science Area will deliver to all three strategic areas but primarily to securing the value of nature by improving methods to detect and forecast tipping points and regime shifts and understand the recovery from extreme events. We will identify ecological structures and attributes that confer resilience and which can potentially be subject to management 2. Science Area Status Each Science Area has identified a number of ambitions to achieve by 2019. 3. Research highlights 3.1 Highlight 1 - CEH Lakes Research International e-Conference: "Geo-engineering in lakes: a call for consensus" Water quality targets and deadlines encapsulated in policy documents such as the EU Water Framework Directive and USA Clean Water Act, have created a pressing need for phosphorus management methods to control eutrophication in lakes. In recent years, geo-engineering techniques have increasingly been used to meet such targets, but there remains a lack of scientific consensus on many aspects of these approaches. This has resulted in liberal use of these techniques, with limited scientific forethought, leading to the potential for unintended consequences. To address this, CEH held an innovative two-week e-conference in March 2014 to bring together key members of the international research community and lake managers, promoting discussion of the need for geo-engineering approaches in lake restoration, methods development, the unintended consequences of such approaches and the need to provide decision support tools for lake managers. The e-Conference comprised 25 topics presented as video or written discussions, organised into four sessions using a web forum format with open discussion threads for each topic. The event was promoted on the CEH Lake Restoration webpages and on Twitter (#elakes14). By the end of the conference, there had been 2330 page hits on the webpages, 98 registrations and 258 posts for the forum, 1249 video views from YouTube and Tudou, 9591 topic views on the forum, and #elakes14 tweets had reached 2189 twitter accounts. The forum presentations now form a resource for future interactions between the research and practitioner communities on geo-engineering in lakes. Following the e-conference two commentaries / opinion papers have been invited by journals in the field. The first, 'Mackay et al. Geo-engineering in lakes: welcome attraction or fatal distraction?' will be published in Inland Waters in the autumn. 3.2 Highlight 2 - Assessing the vulnerability of the marine bird community in the western North Sea to climate change and other anthropogenic impacts Ocean warming and anthropogenic activities such as fishing, shipping and marine renewable developments are threatening top predator community resilience, yet research has tended to focus on the effects of single stressors on single species. We studied a marine bird community (45 species; 11 families) utilising the western North Sea for breeding, overwintering or during migration between 1980 and 2011, a period with significant increases in sea surface temperature, fishing pressure and shipping disturbance. We used multiple data sources, including data from CEH's long-term study of seabird populations on the Isle of May (IMLOTS), to quantitatively assess relationships between sea surface temperature and population counts and demography of 25 species for which sufficient data were available for analysis. For the remaining species, we applied a qualitative approach using published trends, published climate relationships and foraging sensitivity. In total, 53% of species showed negative relationships with sea surface temperature. Trends in demography were combined with climate vulnerability to give an index of population concern to future climate warming, and 44% of species were classified as of high or very high concern, notably cormorants, grebes, skuas, shearwaters, terns and auks, as well as species breeding in the region. Qualitative assessments of vulnerability to fisheries, pollutants, disturbance (including introduced predators), marine renewables (since the study area is a priority area for renewable developments) and climate found that 93% of species were vulnerable to =2 threats, and 58% to =4. Our results indicate that the majority of bird species in this region of the North Sea face an uncertain future, potentially threatening the resilience of this important marine bird community. 3.3 Highlight 3 - Saltmarsh Resilience Coastal plant communities are valuable for the biodiversity they support, and have many important functions in terms of coastal protection, agricultural production and regulating greenhouse gas fluxes. Changes in habitat suitability for positive indicator-species are a strong indicator of overall habitat quality, and many functions are specific to particular plant species. The 'Saltmarsh Resilience' project is developing the capacity to predict changes in habitat suitability for plant species in coastal habitats, resulting from interactions among drivers such as sea-level rise, climate change and atmospheric pollution. The main output to date has been a set of multidimensional niche models that predict habitat suitability for 132 coastal plant species given information on climate (annual precipitation and maximum and minimum temperatures), soil conditions (salinity, fertility, alkalinity and moisture) and light availability (Jarvis et al., submitted ). Inputs can be based on long-term average climate data and floristic trait-means, which are publically available. Due to the strong links between trait-means and environmental conditions, floristic data can also be used to calibrate dynamic biogeochemical models to site conditions, at extremely low cost compared to biogeochemical monitoring. This approach is being applied in two studies of ecosystem responses and resilience under scenarios of anthropogenic change and recovery: coastal re-alignment, which addresses the resilience of salt-marsh to agricultural conversion on multi-century timescales (Garbutt et al., in prep.); and nitrogen critical-load setting in the context of the extreme persistence of nitrogen in recalcitrant soil pools (Rowe et al., in prep .). These articles will be submitted by March 2015. The rapidly-developing capacity of this team to apply dynamic niche occupancy models to emerging environmental issues is likely to have considerable impact on ecosystem management at a range of scales. 4. Future research The priority research areas for the Ecological Processes Resilience Science Area over the next five years include the management of genetic resources to improve resilience to Climate Change and increased challenges of pathogens and invasive pests for instance in forestry (e.g. ProTree, THAPBI), understanding the sensitivity to single and multiple stressors in lake ecosystems and their impact (GloboLakes, MARS), and to study the link between biodiversity and resilience in relation to invasives and vector borne disease (ROBIN, VMERGE). Specific priorities for the next year include the development and verification of new statistical methods to detect and forecast regime shifts (ECN, IMLOTS) and of new methods identifying community network structures conferring resilience (NC resilience project). We examine community resilience to extreme events such as drought including soil diversity and impacts on carbon flow (EcoFinders) and population return times after drought events in relation to their landscape context (JNCC/BRC). 2016-17 developments & highlights CEH integrated >370,000 phenological species records and applied a novel statistical approach to assess the climate sensitivity of UK seasonal events, which showed that the seasonal activities of UK plant and animal species are less sensitive to rainfall than to temperature. This was the first time that such a pattern had been observed among so many species and habitats, at the national scale, and could have important implications for UK biodiversity and ecosystem health throughout the UK. CEH scientists collaborated with colleagues from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and Edinburgh to develop a new statistical model that opens up new possibilities for studying phenology change across larger numbers of species than has previously been possible, and for better understanding phenological trends in space as well as time. CEH led a team of researchers to critically assess the challenge of environmental change to complex ecological systems that humanity relies upon at local, regional and global scales. The study identified that, in general, resilience-enhancing measures are available to practitioners across most ecosystem types but that researchers have low confidence in their effectiveness risking 'knee-jerk' management. Anthropogenic pressures, including climate change, are causing non-linear changes in ecosystems across the globe. Reliable early warning indicators (EWIs) are needed to predict such changes in order to manage ecosystems and protect biodiversity, natural capital and ecosystem services. CEH undertook a comprehensive test of the consistency between EWIs and non-linear abundance change across long-term data from multiple species and trophic levels (126 data sets, 55 taxa and 4926 cumulative years of data) in six aquatic study systems, including shallow lake, deep lake and coastal marine ecosystems. We found very little consistency between EWIs and non-linear turning points in abundance. 2017-18 developments & highlights: The state of the major Cumbrian lakes in 2016 report outlines some of the water quality results from seven Cumbrian Lakes taken in 2016 as part of a significant long-term monitoring exercise... These and other measurements, some made automatically every few minutes, help us to document how different types of lakes respond to environmental change. The understanding of the causes of change that this generates is used to help manage lakes sustainably for future generations. Plants and pollution removal - estimating the value There is continued interest from government and the public in recent work done by CEH for the Office of National Statistics (ONS). The ONS has just released an article looking in more detail at our air pollution estimates report and how plants can play a vital role in pollution removal leading to potential health benefits. Our work shows that woodland provides the greatest economic benefit in the UK in terms of estimated avoided health costs, far more than any other habitat. Trees are good filters of pollution. The study found that the value of woodland is far higher than other habitats despite covering less land than farmland and grassland. New Year Honours 2018 - Professor Helen Roy awarded MBE for her outstanding service to biodiversity research, citizen science and science communication. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2013 |
| Sector | Environment |
| Impact Types | Economic |